Town with a Pink Secret
by ExtraSyrupPlease
Summary: When Bella moves to Forks at her mother's insistence, she discovers that it is a very strange place that baffles even its own inhabitants. (Several characters are OOC. Plot makes no sense.)
1. Chapter 1

"I wish I didn't have to do this," I said to Renee as we drove to the airport.  
"I am so sick of hearing that! Give it a rest, Bella, for pete's sake."  
"Sorry."  
"You don't sound sorry."  
"I have trouble with tone of voice."  
"Is this about Asperger syndrome again? You know I hate it when you use that as an excuse."  
"It's not an excuse. I'm just telling the truth."  
"Yeah, sure. It's not even a real disorder."  
"Yes, it is."  
"We're not having this discussion again, okay?"  
"You brought it up in the first place."  
"Shut up and let me focus on the road. You're impossible. Jesus."

I did so for a while, as I was unsure of what to say. I felt stifled, unresolved. I diverted the frustration into my hair, twisting the short stuff in my fingers. It needed a wash.

"I really am sorry, though," I said.  
"I said _shut up_!" Her shriek sent a shiver through me. I clasped my hands tightly in my lap, trying to squeeze out the shame.

Nothing could convince my mother to allow me to remain in Phoenix. She told me I would feel like a third wheel now that she was marrying her second husband, and besides, his sports career would require him to move around a lot. I would have to resign myself to change no matter what. I couldn't get rid of the suspicion that she and Phil didn't want me around because I wasn't normal and I would get in the way of their happiness. The truth was probably buried in their eyes somewhere.

In any case, now I was in the process of moving to the rainy town of Forks, where my father Charlie lived. It wasn't so bad in the summer, when I had routinely stayed there in the past, but now I would be there throughout the rest of the year as well. It wasn't the rain that bothered me so much as that it would be different.

Renee and I still weren't speaking when I was about to get on the plane. Her goodbye was terse and cold. These situations always resolved themselves rather quickly, and I had no doubt that our future email and phone exchanges would be amicable, but I wished I weren't leaving her at this kind of nadir.

Looking at her was like looking at an older version of myself. Her face had begun to show the signs of age, but everything else was the same: pale skin, brown eyes, dark hair with the same short haircut. Beyond that, however, we bore little resemblance. I tried not to be glad that our clashing personalities would be permanently distanced. I was supposed to miss her.

I stroked the seats during the flight, trying to distract myself from the pressure in my ears. They weren't as fuzzy as the ones in Renee's car. I might never see that car again, either. I'd never see the conspiracy theory bumper stickers or the Sharpie scribbles on the seat fabric that I had put there about a decade ago.

I worried about what Charlie and I would talk about on the drive from Port Angeles to Forks. Renee was the only person I conversed easily with, and even with her I often went on too long about a pet topic of mine or used the wrong speaking intensity, which annoyed her so much that I fell silent. It should be noted that I was not solely to blame. Charlie was a man of few words, and I was hardly one to initiate discussion.

* * *

Charlie silently helped me stuff my bags into the back of the police cruiser. He was the police chief of Forks, and the cruiser was his only vehicle. I didn't have much luggage because women's clothes wear out easily and I hate clothes shopping. I would have had even less if one bag hadn't been devoted to my collections of toothpaste caps and bread closers. I had wanted to bring my empty dental floss containers as well, but Renee had insisted that I throw them out instead.

After we had driven along for about half an hour in silence, I asked, "Am I supposed to say something?"  
"No."  
"So you want me to be quiet?"  
"I don't care. Whatever floats your boat."  
I looked out the window at the rain, watching it make diagonal rivulets on the glass. "Say, Dad, is the summer the dry season?"  
"Yep."  
"Does it rain the rest of the year?"  
"Pretty much."  
"When doesn't it rain?"  
"When it snows."

When we arrived at Charlie's house, there was a faded red truck parked outside. "That's your new truck," he said.  
"My new truck? You bought it for me?"  
"Yep."  
"Wow, thanks. You didn't need to do that. I was going to buy my own car." I didn't want to be driven to school in the cruiser because it would slow down traffic. I didn't want to make trouble for anyone.  
"Too late now. So what do you think?"  
I considered. "It looks like a truck."  
"Sure does."

The interior of Charlie's house smelled like someone else's house, just as it always had. It was a vague mixture of cat supplies, dish detergent and unidentifiable miscellany. I supposed the effect would vanish after I had been there long enough. Renee's house was odorless.

I brought my stuff up to the bedroom that had historically been mine. The walls were blue, but the curtains weren't. I wondered which of them symbolized what. I unpacked everything right then and there so I wouldn't delay it indefinitely. The toothpaste caps and bread closers ended up on the desk, which also held a new second-hand computer so Renee and I could stay in touch. The collection items were no longer in chronological order; I tried to order the caps by the amount of dust on them, but it was futile.

Kleenex, Charlie's cat, was nowhere to be seen. She was afraid of strangers. Staying in her house every summer had done nothing to convince her that I was not a threat. Nonetheless, her hair was clearly visible on every object dark enough to reveal the white strands.

The first day of school started tomorrow. I worried a little that the other students would find out what I was and endeavor to make my life miserable as a result, but it would probably be all right. I was going into twelfth grade, well after the worst years. Those lay safely in the past in Phoenix. The real challenge was making friends. I hadn't had any back home; the few relationships I'd formed tended to fall apart like a house of cards. Renee would keep getting on my case about this, I knew. The mystery of my difficulties had vanished one day two years ago in Dr. Park's office, but Renee didn't believe it. Anyone could have those traits, she said. It was like ADHD. Just another way to pathologize normal behavior.


	2. Chapter 2

I ate breakfast the next day out of a bowl that I had rinsed out to make it stop smelling like cat food. This was an ongoing struggle in this house. Charlie said nothing at breakfast except to wish me good luck at school. After he left for work, I sat back down at the kitchen table and spun a Coke bottlecap to pass the time before I needed to leave.

It was still only overcast when I left, though the way the wind rustled the trees foretold rain. Charlie had taught me to recognize that. A uniform blanket of gray covered the sky like a giant glowing dryer rug. I had my raincoat on just in case.

The truck's tan seats held nothing except for a banana on the front passenger side. I picked it up and examined it. It was made of plastic. It seemed to be moving slightly after I set it back where it had been, but I dismissed it as an illusion. I supposed the banana had belonged to Billy Black, whom Charlie had informed me yesterday was the original owner of the truck. Why had he left it there?

The engine started quickly enough, but it was too loud. I would have to store a box of Kleenex in here so I could stuff my ears with them.

When I arrived at Forks High School, I discovered that it was a brick building constructed from brick-colored bricks and surrounded by tree-colored trees. Some of the bricks tended toward beige or black, but most of them were the usual tautological shade.

I parked in the front parking lot and went in through the front doors. Hoping to get directions, I entered the front office a short distance away. The desk inside was unoccupied except for an orange cat curled up on one of the stacks of paper. The cat raised its head to look at me, then jumped behind the desk, causing papers to spray wildly in my direction. It scurried over to a door at the back of the office, sat down, and meowed several times until the door opened and a red-haired woman in a purple t-shirt came out. "All right, all right," she said, sounding exasperated.

I picked up the rogue papers and set them back on the counter.

"Thank you for picking those up," she said after coming up to the desk. "Tigger just can't stop making messes. How can I help you?"

I told her my name, and she handed me a schedule and a map of the school that had been contained in the documents Tigger had displaced.

"Is Tigger supposed to be here?" I asked.  
"Oh, of course! We hired him just last week."  
"Hired him to do what, exactly, if you don't mind my asking?"  
"We've got a mouse problem."  
"I see."  
"No, you don't. These aren't just any mice. They're jumped-up mutant mice that walk on the ceiling and eat everything. And I mean _everything_. We've lost several computers to them."  
"Uh..."  
"Anyway, I hope you like it in Forks."  
" _I_ hope I don't get eaten by these alleged mice."  
"I'm sure you'll be fine."

I followed the map to my first class while picking off the occasional orange hair. Soon I would have the routes memorized, but for now I had to carry the map everywhere.

Mr. Mason, the English teacher, was a short man with a hairy forehead. He was partway through explaining the class expectations when a mouse materialized on the ceiling. It was a hideous shade of pink, and its squeaks were a mockery of sound. Hardly anyone reacted to it at all, even when it started chewing a hole in one of the ceiling tiles and causing beige debris to rain down on somebody's desk.

The rest of the morning passed without incident, though everyone seemed to be talking about the mouse. Not only did word spread quickly in a school with only three hundred and fifty-seven students (not counting me), but the classes shared several. I didn't give it much thought. It was too unreal.

Jessica, who sat next to me in both trigonometry and Spanish, decided for some reason that we should go to the cafeteria together. I don't like cafeterias, but I probably couldn't afford to turn this down.

"Did you hear about the mouse?" she said. "I heard it was pink."  
"You mean the one in Mr. Mason's class?"  
"Yeah. I heard it was, like, the size of a horse and it ate Mr. Mason and barfed glitter everywhere."  
"No, it was about mouse-sized, and —"  
"You were _there_?! Like, wow, that's totally awesome!"  
"— and all it did was eat a hole in the ceiling."  
"Jeez, you look like you don't even care... what's your name again?"  
I told her.  
"Oh, yeah. Are you, like, new here?"  
"Yes. I just moved here yesterday."  
"Wow, you're new in Forks, too. Do you like it?"  
"Sure, it's all right. It's wet."  
"It totally is."

By the time we entered the cafeteria, I had stopped responding to Jessica's comments beyond insubstantial affirmations. I tried to keep up with her, but I felt like I was drowning in a flood of words. It was sort of like when Charlie tried to explain calculus to me and I wouldn't understand why the x-velocity was equal to the negative angular velocity times y or whatever it was. It wasn't that I was bad at math so much as that Charlie was bad at explanations.

On the other hand, the cafeteria was far quieter than I expected, as it contained far fewer students than the one in Phoenix. Nonetheless, it was still noisy enough to annoy me.

Jessica and I sat at a table containing various friends of hers, some of whom I recognized. I interacted with them briefly, then slid back into silence as they happily chattered away as if I were not there.

I looked up at the ceiling some hundreds of feet above me, figuring it was probably about a third as many meters high as it was in feet. One of the ceiling tiles was missing, leaving a square black gap. I thought I saw something pink scurry away from the gap, but it was too small and far to tell what it was.

I listened intermittently to the conversation, aiming to join in if I could gather enough information about the subject.

"I heard something banging on my window last night," said Lauren. Lauren was pretty memorable — she had silvery eyes, thin lips and odd lines on her neck. Her voice sounded like running water, like a livelier version of the Black Rabbit of Inlé.  
"It was probably just the rain," said Jessica. "It rains, like, a lot here. It literally rains cats and dogs."  
"Literally?" said one of the other girls. "Like actual cats and dogs fall out of the sky? That, like, never happens, ever."  
"Oh, I didn't mean literally. I meant, you know, _literally_."  
"But, like," Lauren went on, "it legit didn't sound like rain. It was like... I dunno, plastic?"  
"Probably a bird. They run into windows a lot. They're, like, really stupid."  
"No, it kept banging. It went on and on and on, like it was trying to, like, get in."  
"What do you think it was?" I said, but they ignored me.  
"Was it that hot substitute teacher?" said a fourth girl eagerly. "What's his name — Mr. Jacuzzi or something."  
"Jakubczak," said the third girl. "He _is_ hot. He looks like Justin Bieber and Tom Cruise had a baby."

It was around that point that my attention wandered off in other directions. Jessica wore a fashionably low-cut top with one of the straps crossing over her arm instead of her collarbone. I selfishly wished she had left more of herself to the imagination.

I examined the scratches on the table. I couldn't let them find out about _that_ , either.

* * *

After lunch I walked to my next class, which was Biology II. One of Jessica's friends sat at one of the black lab tables.

There was only one empty seat, which I sat down in after Mr. Banner signed my slip and handed me a book. It was in the middle of the room, within the chair area. A pale boy with messy reddish-brown hair sat to my right, facing away from me toward the window. I'd say about forty-five degrees — he wasn't really in a position for ninety. Not enough room to maneuver.

Attendance revealed that Jessica's friend was named Angela and the boy next to me was Edward. He kept looking out the window as he raised his hand.

Mr. Banner gave a lecture on cellular anatomy. I had already studied it, but I took notes in case he mentioned something I had forgotten or never learned. I'm not Kim Peek. He showed pictures of prokaryotic, animal and plant cells on the projector; the prokaryote looked like it had spaghetti noodles inside, and the animal cell looked like a deformed mouse.

The lecture ran out a few minutes before the end of the class. I noticed that Edward was writing something on a piece of paper, so I glanced at it. He wrote in cursive rather than print, contrary to what seemed to be the modern trend. His writing was utterly illegible, even worse than mine. I figured it was none of my business anyway.

When I got up to leave, he stopped writing and turned back to the window.

The next class was gym. Coach Clapp had them play volleyball, which I managed to not participate in due to not figuring out what I was supposed to do. I hoped that wouldn't happen again. With mandatory PE all four years, maybe I'd finally get some exercise. I wasn't fat, but I wasn't in shape either.

After the final bell rang, I went back to the office to return my paperwork. Unfortunately, the receptionist was occupied. Edward was arguing with her about something. I would have to stand around and wait.

"That room overlooks the front yard," he said.  
"It does? Darn."  
"Yep — I looked at the floor plan. Haven't you got any other rooms with windows? I need one with a view of the back or side yard."  
"I looked at the floor plan, too, Mr. Cullen. It doesn't indicate where the building is relative to the rest of the lot."  
"The front doors lead to the front yard, obviously."  
"The front doors aren't on the second floor, which is what I was looking at. _Obviously_."  
Tigger walked in and rubbed against Edward's legs. "Meow?"  
"What's he want?" asked Edward.  
"Food. Same thing he always wants. Silly guy won't eat any of the mice he catches."  
"So as I was saying, have you got any other —"  
"Let me find that thing again." She rummaged in a pile of paper that was about a foot and a half tall and as shapeless as Paddington's hat. "God, what a mess... ah, here it is." She pulled out a sheet with two dog ears and a brownish stain.  
"What happened to it? That doesn't look like coffee."  
"Cats throw up on anything they can get a hold of. So anyway, since you know all about this place, which side of this is the front?"  
There was a pause as, presumably, Edward considered the floor plan.  
"Okay, here's — _hey!_ Get off me!" Tigger was trying to climb up Edward's left leg. Edward violently shoved him off. Tigger yowled and scurried away.  
"I know that's annoying, but try to be gentle. He's small and breakable."  
"It _hurt_. Anyway. Here's room 220, so this side must be the front."  
"I'll take your word for it."  
"Now let's see — there are three rooms with windows at the back, and one at the side." He pointed to them. "Can I transfer to any of those classes?"  
She sighed. "The one on the side isn't even a classroom. It's an office. The back ones... this one doesn't have a class that period, and the other two are full."  
"Well, that sucks."  
"Looks like you'll have to stick with biology. What's so bad about that room again? It's got a back window."  
"Trees. They're blocking the view. I tried to see out through them, but no dice."  
"What do you even need a back window for? What are you trying to see?"  
"We don't know yet."  
"Sounds like you'll have a hard time finding it."  
"We'll see. Thanks for your help, Ms. Cope."  
"Have a nice day."

Edward finally left, enabling me to give Ms. Cope my paperwork. "So what was that all about?" I asked her.  
She shrugged. "Dunno. How was your day?"  
"It was fine. Nobody ate me."  
"I can see that."

I took some tissues out of the Kleenex box on the desk and stuffed them into a pocket of my raincoat. I left the building, walked over to the truck and got in. There was an odd humming noise. I glanced over at the passenger seat and saw that the banana was vibrating. I didn't know what to do about that, so I didn't do anything.

I tore two pieces off a tissue, shoved them in my ears and started the truck. It was still loud, but it was more tolerable.

I pulled out of the parking lot and drove back home.

* * *

Once both Charlie and I were home, I told him about the alleged mice, as well as the one I'd seen. He said that mice really do chew on anything and the pink one was probably dyed.

I also told him about the banana in the truck. "Is it Billy's? Did he forget to take it out when he was clearing out his stuff?"  
"I don't know."  
"Should we call him and ask?"  
"Sure." He went over to the kitchen phone and dialed a number.

One phone conversation later, we knew that the banana belonged not to Billy himself but to his son Jacob, and Billy didn't want it back.


End file.
